Close window | View original article
We recently published a piece putting forth the controversial suggestion that perhaps Republicans should not be so eager to abandon their allies merely because the ever-lying, bigoted news media claims, on no evidence presented, that they've behaved in a sleazy fashion. The Left, as we all know, defends the most monstrous of behavior by their allies; while we don't want to go full psychopath, at the very least we should strictly enforce the American principle of "innocent until proven guilty" when it comes to politicians who vote the right way.
Yet it's long been observed how Republicans, like sharks, are even more eager to fall upon a wounded erstwhile ally than they are to take the fight to the actual enemy.
Indeed, when it comes to inflicting damage on the enemy, Republicans tend to be more followers of Mother Teresa, reveling in turning the other cheek even while taking it in the backside. This may be an effective way to get to heaven, but is not useful if the goal is saving one's country.
Of course, in order to do damage to your enemy, you must first recognize who the enemy is, and even at this fundamental level Republicans hardly reach first base. For instance, taxpayer-funded public sector labor unions have donated nearly exclusively to Democrats for several lifetimes, and yet it's only been in recent years, through the action of lawsuits - by conservative groups rather than by politicians - that any attempt has been made to shut off the pipeline of taxpayer cash directly into Democrat election funds via public-sector unions.
In the Janus v. AFSCME decision, the Court found that it was unconstitutional to require people to contribute to union political donations as part of government employment and also illegal to automatically take money from their paychecks without their explicit permission and approval. This, by itself, took more money out of Democrat pockets and returned it to ordinary wage-earning workers than just about any law ever passed by Republicans.
Businesses know that offending Republicans and Republican voters comes with nearly no cost. We could write a long list of conservative boycotts through the years, from decades-long Christian attempts to boycott Disney for their Gay Days, to similar attempts to boycott Target for inviting mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria to freely use the wrong restrooms and changing rooms. These accomplished nothing - the offensive policies remained in place, any temporary drop in profits long since restored. Indeed, far from cancelling the homosexual revelry, Disney instead cancelled Christian church services and concerts.
Yet when the Left flexes its muscles, corporations snap to attention without any regard to consistency or principle. Nike and the NBA have no problem working with slave-labor camps in China, but when it comes to slanderously and falsely accusing America of racist genocide, they're all in. Similarly, Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola have taken it upon thsemselves to condemn Georgia's new law requiring a government ID in order to vote - apparently having forgotten that Delta, at least, requires a government ID in order to board one of their planes.
Will Republicans finally find the inner strength to deliver vengeance upon their enemies? Georgia's lower house passed a bill stripping a special tax break from Delta, but it's just posturing - the session is over, so the Senate will not take it up, and by next year's session the flap will doubtless have been long since shoved down the memory hole.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R, FL) at least gets credit for trying something different: to everyone's surprise, he's recently come out in favor of efforts to unionize Amazon distribution warehouses.
Here's my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy - I support the workers. And that's why I stand with those at Amazon's Bessemer warehouse today.
On the face of it, Mr. Rubio certainly has a point: if there's a plutocrat who's come down foursquare on the side of leftist tyranny and cancellation of conservatives, it's Jeff Bezos. His Amazon Web Services knocked Parler off the Internet because it refused to censor conservative thought; his Washington Post has long been rabidly pro-socialism and pro-Democrat; and Amazon itself, the world's largest bookseller, has now started purging its virtual shelves of books that argue against prevailing liberal shibboleths. Why should Mr. Bezos have billions that could instead be spent increasing the wages of hardworking Americans?
The trouble is, how much of the money will actually go to hardworking Americans, versus (say) illegal immigrants or union bosses via forcibly-extracted dues? Yes, taking a stripe off of Amazon is all to the good, but what difference will it make if the proceeds merely benefit a different leftist group with the same corrosive goals?
If we want to play that game, we'd be better off establishing a super-minimum wage: let's say, $25/hour for any corporation with more than $100 billion in cumulative revenue. At least that way the money would have to go into the pockets of the workers without being diverted through infinitely sticky union fingers.
Of course that would lead to all manner of strange structural effects, like "Amazon" reforming into 100 separate "smaller" companies all still owned and run by the same guy. But we do have decades of experience dealing with this: in the early years, Sam Walton's Wal-Mart was structured exactly this way, with each individual store technically its own corporation, precisely for the purpose of avoiding minimum wage laws.
Is this the best solution? Hardly. But it's a start - and, like the worthy legislators of Georgia, now that corporations have openly declared themselves our enemies, it's time to stop defending them. A little strategic temporary alliance from time to time with others who hate those same corporations - yes, maybe even with others who hate us too - could reap useful benefits.
What's more, we have a brilliant opportunity to turn the evil leftist tactics of Saul Alinsky against his modern acolytes, specifically his advice to "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." The first part has already been done: the CEOs of Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, Ed Bastian and James Quincey respectively, have picked themselves as the targets.
By publicly issuing and supporting statements about Georgia's new voting-rights law that are demonstrably and provably false, as even the Washington Post admits, these CEOs have violated their fiduciary duty to their shareholders, proven themselves unfit for high office in publicly-traded companies, and should resign forthwith. It can even be a crime for executives to knowingly make false public statements that will affect their companies' shares, and at the very least they did so with gross negligence, having not even read the bill they were inveighing against. Don't you think some enterprising lawyer should look into this?
As a result of their political cupidity, they've directly taken hundreds of millions of dollars from their fellow Georgia businesses. Do we suppose the now-poorer residents of Atlanta, the world's wealthiest black city, will feel kindly towards these white malefactors of great wealth? Anyone who holds Delta or Coke stock while Ed Bastian and James Quincey are still employed there is a fool who will soon be parted from his money one way or another - and it's our job to make sure that comes true, with blame properly placed squarely upon the personal heads of Mr. Bastian and Mr. Quincey.
Does this somehow feel wrong? Why? What gives rich people, or giant corporations, the right to tell leftist lies without paying any penalty? Is there something in conservative doctrine that requires us to continue to give money to our sworn enemies? Even Lenin himself observed that capitalists will sell communists the rope he'd use to hang them, over a century ago - must we continue with the same stupidity?
After all, if the Heritage Foundation could offer their lecture hall to radical lesbian feminists who oppose the transgender agenda because nobody else would let them speak, what temporary alliance of convenience or profound change in tactics is truly impossible if it results in pain being felt in the right places?